CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad

Paragraph A

The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad. The name referred to a secret network of people, routes and hiding places that helped enslaved African Americans escape from the southern United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Those involved borrowed the language of the railways that were then spreading across North America: guides were called “conductors,” the homes and barns where travellers hid were “stations,” and the people who sheltered them were “stationmasters.” Most journeys were made on foot, often at night, and could take weeks or even months. Many freedom seekers settled in the northern states, but for a growing number the final goal was British North America, where slavery had been abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834.

Paragraph B

The journey north became more urgent after 1850, when the United States passed the Fugitive Slave Act. The law allowed people who had escaped to be captured even in free northern states and returned to their enslavers, and it punished anyone who helped them. Suddenly, men and women who had lived quietly in northern cities for years were no longer safe. Crossing into what is now Canada, often over the Detroit or Niagara rivers, offered them real legal protection. Historians cannot give an exact figure for how many people made the journey, since those involved deliberately avoided keeping records that could be used against them, but most estimates run into the tens of thousands.

Paragraph C

Most newcomers settled in what is now southern Ontario, in and around towns such as St. Catharines, Chatham, Windsor and Amherstburg. Some founded communities of their own, where they built churches and schools and started farms and businesses. Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor of all, lived in St. Catharines for several years in the 1850s and guided a number of people there. Mary Ann Shadd, a teacher and writer who had moved north herself, founded a newspaper, the Provincial Freeman, to encourage others to follow and to report on life in their new home. That life was far from easy, however. Many newcomers faced prejudice, and some schools refused to admit their children.

Paragraph D

After the American Civil War ended slavery in the United States in 1865, many families went back south, some of them hoping to find relatives from whom they had been separated, while others stayed and put down deep roots. Descendants of those who stayed still live in many of these communities. Today, their story is told at historic sites across Ontario, including the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum near Chatham, and in a growing number of classrooms. August 1, the anniversary of the end of slavery in the British Empire, has long been celebrated as Emancipation Day by some communities, and in 2021 Canada’s Parliament voted to recognize it across the country.